Bosnia and Herzegovina should receive candidate status at the spring session of the NATO alliance this year, the country’s defense minister Zukan Helez said today in Sarajevo, stressing that this is another step closer to membership in the North Atlantic Alliance.
“It is recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina for everything it has done on the NATO path. I am fully aware that it has other political connotations and expectations, but I am a legalist and as long as the Law on Defense in Article 84 says that our goal is membership in NATO federation, I work according to the law and that is our goal,” Helez said.
At the conference on the occasion of the opening of the NATO Conference of Strategic Military Partners (MSPC 24) in Sarajevo, Helez said that this is the second large gathering in Bosnia and Herzegovina, after the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in February this year.
“This is a sign that the NATO alliance has close cooperation with Bosnia and Herzegovina. We have had a partnership for more than 20 years. A few days ago, in the House of the Armed Forces of BiH, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the existence of this military-political organization. In these 20 years, the Armed Forces of BiH have made exceptional progress. Every day, we harmonized the standards of the Armed Forces with the standards of the NATO alliance, and as a result of this cooperation, we had several successful international missions where our forces, side by side with NATO representatives, carried out the most complex military tasks,” said Helez.
The Chief of the Joint Staff of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Major General Gojko Knežević, said that the partnership between Bosnia and Herzegovina and NATO has been ongoing since 2006 and is carried out through cooperation in various areas, primarily in the field of education, training, equipment, evaluation, assessment of the achieved level of interoperability.
“Our obligation is to build operational capabilities and capacity to carry out tasks defined by law, and everything beyond that is the realm of politics. As for the process in relation to NATO and other organizations, these are foreign policy issues, for which the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina is responsible,” said Knežević, stating that Bosnia and Herzegovina has intensified cooperation with NATO.
Deputy Chief of Staff of the Partnership Directorate of the Supreme Allied Command for Europe SHAPE Gunnstein Bruasdal said that representatives of 65 countries are participating in the conference in Sarajevo, which he assessed as exceptional for building relations.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina is a very close partner and we have made enormous progress together. We have been doing this since 2006, when Bosnia and Herzegovina officially became a partner,” said Bruasdal.
He added that there are many threats and problems in the world today and that they can only be resisted by joint forces.
“The NATO family is big, we have 32 members, but also 35 partners and we are all over the world with about two billion inhabitants. The Directorate for Partnership plus Bosnia and Herzegovina as the host is organizing this conference with partners from all over the world to determine the way forward. “It is up to the partners to determine what and how much they will do, what Bosnia and Herzegovina has done is a lot, it is training together with us. We will talk individually at meetings with partners about the future of our partnership,” said Bruasdal.
The NATO Conference of Strategic Military Partners (MSPC 24), hosted by the Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, opened in Sarajevo on Monday.
The conference held from April 8 to 12 in the NATO organization will be an opportunity to exchange opinions on important strategic issues of NATO partners, as well as the improvement of military cooperation, AA writes.
